Project Overview
Our final project for this course will be your opportunity to look a bit deeper into a brand and country of your choice. This will also be your opportunity to apply concepts and insights we’ve encountered during our short but intense historical tour of advertising.
We’ve explored how ads often linked commodities, products, services, or brands with symbolic features as a way of propelling consumer interest and sales. The symbolic associations established through advertisements were themselves informed by and aligned with larger ideological frameworks that asserted specific claims about race, class, gender, nation, or the market. Advertisements thus offer us a window into the fantasy worlds and dream visions circulating within consumer cultures at particular moments in time.
Nevertheless, because ideological frameworks were always contingent upon changing political and economic conditions, advertisers have never been able to sit still. Rather, advertisers must constantly find ways to work within shifting ideological fields while competing to sell products, gain market share, and win consumers’ hearts, if not their minds. Sometimes advertisements succeed dramatically. Other times they fail spectacularly. Most of the time, they simply fill in an already overpopulated landscape.
Final Draft (60%): 5-page paper, format as follows:
a description of country or region where ad campaign was attempted, consideration of relevant cultural characteristics, ideological issues, description of race, gender, or class norms
a description of brand, product, company, or message for which the advertising campaign was produced
an analysis of ad (campaign), consideration of how the advertisements linked the product or brand with specific symbolic attributes, how the advertisement(s) evoked particular fantasies or dream worlds for consumers, whether the ad (campaign) can be considered a success
an evaluation of the overall outcome, whether successful or otherwise
Project Suggestions
A solid paper will offer a thoughtful analysis that draws on concepts and themes we have covered in this course. In keeping with our practice in the course, you should identify and analyze at least one advertisement (print, radio, billboard, film, TV, social media, etc). You can either concentrate on the content within the ad alone or bring in additional sources to reveal how the ad was produced or received.
You are welcome to examine ads in a different language, but please do provide translations for any quoted material.
Please provide citations for all material, readings, ads, or other sources you draw on. You may use MLA, APA, or Chicago as long as you use it consistently.
For guidance on research and writing, please check out the Research and Writing Resources page I put together. I am also happy to chat outside of class with you about your interests and how to go about research, drafting, writing, or presenting. I will provide additional office hours this week and next to help facilitate this.
Project Suggestions
A solid paper will offer a thoughtful analysis that draws on concepts and themes we have covered in this course. In keeping with our practice in the course, you should identify and analyze at least one advertisement (print, radio, billboard, film, TV, social media, etc). You can either concentrate on the content within the ad alone or bring in additional sources to reveal how the ad was produced or received.
You are welcome to examine ads in a different language, but please do provide translations for any quoted material.
Please provide citations for all material, readings, ads, or other sources you draw on. You may use MLA, APA, or Chicago as long as you use it consistently.
For guidance on research and writing, please check out the Research and Writing Resources page I put together. I am also happy to chat outside of class with you about your interests and how to go about research, drafting, writing, or presenting. I will provide additional office hours this week and next to help facilitate this.
Last Completed Projects
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